Home Again

Meh

Ok. OK. OKAY. I don’t quite know what to make of Home Again. I know one thing for sure though, Reese Witherspoon hasn’t aged a day since Legally Blonde (daaaamn guuurrrrl).

Enough about the good things in this movie, let’s have a little peek into where it went wrong.

The basic set up is this..

Alice Kinney (Witherspoon), the daughter of a deceased, well-known film director, is having a mid-life crisis. She’s recently separated from her busy record producer husband (Michael Sheen) and has moved back to her family home (freakin sweet mansion) with her two young daughters. She lets loose for her 40th and ends up bringing home Harry (Pico Alexander), an attractive and much younger man. When her mother (Candice Bergen) shows up unannounced the next morning and the Harry and his brothers (who also stayed over) recognize her from her acting days and reveal themselves to be huge fans of Alice’s father, she invites them to live in the mansion with Alice while they try to get their movie made in LA. From there the ‘fun’ begins.

“This whole situation is so normal and fun”

Have you ever been in a cinema where everybody cringes in unison 50+ times? It’s an interesting experience which I recommend giving a go at least once in your life. Going to see Home Again at the cinema will get this one crossed off your bucket list for sure. It’s not that I’m uncomfortable with a 40 year old woman hooking up with a 26 year old man, that’s all good…probably. Alice certainly doesn’t seem comfortable with the idea as she resists the temptation of sleeping with Harry a few times in between sleeping with Harry. You get to cringe your way through a very unconvincing Mills and Boon-esque (I’VE NEVER READ ONE OKAY!? SHUT UP) scene where Harry fixes a cabinet and then deserves sex as a reward. I’m cringing my skin off as I remember it. To make the whole situation seem super normal, a friend of Alice’s comments on how the three brothers provide Alice with “Tech support, free live-in childcare and sex”, the dream for any woman apparently and only attainable by collecting a complete set of three young men. I think I just came up with an excellent plot for a teen horror flick.

“Oh so that’s your tech-support brother? Yea invite him over.”

While all this sexiness is going on, Alice keeps informing everyone about how old and wise she is all smug-styles while she lets three strangers live in her house with her 2 young daughters. Ah yea. She lets George drive one of them to school the morning after they move in and they all spend quality alone time with them, even after Alice catches the youngest brother with drugs (don’t worry, she tells him that drugs are a no no in her house). I just can’t even compute.

Neither can Reese Witherspoon

The three brothers: Harry, George and Teddy become strangely obsessed with Alice and her family in a seemingly very short amount of time. They never want to move out and when Alice’s husband shows up (who she’s still friends with btw), they see him as a threat to the weird little family vibe they’ve built with his wife and kids. The youngest of the brothers, Teddy, punches him in the face for some reason and they have a bizarre fight (because some kind of friction had to happen so Alice could kick the boys out for a bit). The relationship between Alice and the three brothers, of course, is portrayed as heartwarming and comedic…but not well enough for the creepiness to stop oozing out of all their tiny pores.

Alright, It’s possible I’m being a little unfair. When I walked out of Home Again, I was prepared to give it a 7/10 and shrug off my minor discomfort with certain aspects of it. While I was in the cinema watching it, overall I had a good time. I definitely laughed a decent amount and some of the characters were genuinely alright. Then a few days passed and I had time to ruminate on the little niggles in the back of my mind. ‘QUIET’ I told them, ‘Pico Alexander is damn good-looking!’ as if that was some kind of defense. Well maybe it is? I’m so confused. You might enjoy this movie if you don’t think about it too much and you love Reese Witherspoon. But if you’ve just read all this, then I guess it’s too late for you to not think about it. Sorry.